Women gain increasing numbers on Pitt faculty

Women are gaining an increasing stake on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.

A new report, published in Pitt’s University Times, revealed that women made up 46% of the full-time faculty, up from 44% three years earlier.

While that falls short of the 51% of the population that is female, it puts Pitt in good standing among the nation’s research universities.

The report, compiled by Pitt’s Office of the Provost every three years, revealed that Pitt ranked second among 65 research universities in the U.S. and Canada in terms of the percentage of full-time female faculty members last year.

Compared to all four-year colleges, Pitt fared one percentage point better than average in terms of female faculty. A Brookings Institution report released last year found women represented 45% of all full-time faculty members at colleges across the United States.

Nationally, many of the gains for women happened over the past decade and a half when the percentage of full-time female faculty members on college campuses increased from 31% to 45%.

Many of those gains have been at the lower levels of the faculty ladder.

Pitt’s most recent report found women accounted for only 28% of those who have achieved the top rank of professor, but that number grew by 2% over the past three years.